


Gravitation

by rusting_roses



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-12
Updated: 2012-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:05:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rusting_roses/pseuds/rusting_roses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love ~Albert Einstein</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gravitation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lectin_gaezat](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lectin_gaezat).



Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.  
~ Albert Einstein

There are those who say that Valentine's Day is an overblown, commercial holiday with no redeeming features whatsoever. It's an excuse for those in a relationship, no matter how poor, to tote their laurels everywhere while those who are single mourn. People claim it's a ridiculous concept anyway, considering that Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni weren't even associated with romantic love in the first place. 

Tom can't—precisely—disagree with any of it. 

He loves the day regardless. 

For Tom, it's always been less a day to prove that you love someone as it is a day to celebrate love, all love, romantic or not. Even though people are supposed to remember to cherish their friends and family all the time, that never happens, not even for a wizard. Sometimes, simply dealing with everyday life can be difficult enough and the idea of scheduling time with Carl or his family or even the few young wizards with whom they are particularly close can seem like an overwhelming and monumental effort. 

So Tom prefers to think of these holidays—whether Valentine's Day or Thanksgiving or Veteran's Day—as reminders from the Powers That Be. Reminders to try and be kinder, to be more understanding, to keep entropy at bay for that much longer. It's Tom's duty to always try and be that way first as a wizard, then as an Advisory and then as a Senior, certainly, but no one's perfect. 

So when Carl reaches out sometime around noon and touches Tom's mind in an old, familiar gesture and says with a certain amount of resignation, _Rhiow just contacted me to say that there's a gravitational well forming that's tangling the string structure and they want my expertise, do you mind coming to lend a hand?_ Tom sighs, disappointed that their plans for the evening need to be set aside but all too aware that this was what he signed up for when he started wizardry. Oh, sure, the Powers try to make 'coincidences' happen, where they arrange for seeming mistakes or free time to be channeled in specific directions—they hate wasting energy, after all—but sometimes Tom wishes that they weren't quite so good at arranging these sorts things. Tonight, after all, is the first night Tom and Carl are both free in the better part of a month and Tom had been looking forward to spending it together. 

Still, Tom supposes it's something that Carl asked him along. Tom is more than happy to leave the bending of space and time to his partner. After all, temporospatial claudiations are decidedly _not_ Tom's specialty. Give Tom words, any words, and command him to construct something out of them, and he's in his element. Any math involving more symbols than numbers is something better left untouched. 

There's nothing quite like have a partner to back you up, though. Nothing against Rhiow or her team, but they simply aren't the same. He trusts them to get Carl out of sticky situations, or temper some of Carl's more creative destruction and reconstruction of physics, but they do not belong with Carl in the same way Tom does. Tom might not know what he's doing, but they've helped each other in unexpected ways before and he'll do it again. Sometimes all it takes is someone removed from the situation, who asks the obvious questions to make sure all of the pieces come together. 

Besides, Tom isn't all that interested in remaining at home if Carl's going to be out working tonight. 

So he seeks out that familiar sense of Carl's mind, the one that tastes of coffee and stars and the city of New York, and asks, _Is there time for me to make food?_

Carl's laugh is a wry, tired thing, but genuine despite that. _Yeah. I can't leave here until four anyways._

Tom nods, knowing his partner will sense it, and turns back to the scene he's working on. 

The universe doesn't stop turning, after all. 

~*~ 

When he arrives at Grand Central Terminal, Tom's got his Manual in one hand and a bag containing freshly made cookies, some diced fruit and some pasta with pesto and feta in the other. He's also got some of the Rhiow-approved cat treats that her team enjoys. It's food that can sit for a while and not spoil, which was Tom's primary motivation behind making it. It also helps that Carl, with his Italian-American heritage, is an absolute sucker for pasta of any sort, and Tom has learned over the years how to make it from the best. 

Carl is already there when Tom appears a little after four, deep in conversation with the gating team. They're pouring over some complex equation that's hanging in the air as they discuss how to redistribute the gravity well temporarily until all the hyperstrings are balanced once more. 

At least, Tom's pretty sure that's what they're discussing. 

"Tom!" his partner greets with a smile, rising from his crouch to greet him. They kiss with a sort of absent, sweet affection, Carl's callused hand rough against Tom's cheek. Tom smiles into it, and then breaks apart. 

"Happy Valentine's Day," Tom says, and tamps down on the laughter that rises when Carl makes a face. 

_I don't think this should count as Valentine's Day if there isn't an excellent chance of getting sex at the end of it_ , he complains mildly. 

Tom winks. _What makes you think you isn't?_

"If you are done?" Rhiow doesn't sound irritated, as such, just rather impatient. "Unfortunately, it is a rather time-sensitive matter." She stares up at them, golden eyes serious. 

"Duty calls," Carl says apologetically, breaking them apart, and returns to the conversation. Tom listens for a moment as Saash and Urruah debate on power discrepancies now that the string superstructure has been unbalanced and work on calculating the exact rate of collapse while Carl and Arhu talk realignment. Rhiow is busily poking at the equation, the wizardly light of the numbers edging her fur in silver. Tom can't help but marvel at them all, just a little. Even the day-to-day work of dealing with the worldgate can be more complicated what some people will deal with even once in their entire lives. 

They're utterly calm about it, however, composed in the way that cats so often are. There isn't any sense of the pressure that they're under. Then again, this isn't the first time Carl and the worldgating team has dealt with this sort of problem under a time limit, and it'll hardly be the last. 

Tom blinks, shaking his head to get over the distraction of watching Carl work. He sets the food near Carl and the others, and then goes to deal with the rush hour traffic of Grand Central Terminal. While the cats have psychotropic-based spells permanently in place to gently deflect curious humans, the team is so deeply involved in their work that none of them would realize a non-wizard was running around until they tripped over them; after all, it's possible for a determined enough person to push past the spells, and it's happened before. Furthermore, even other wizards wandering by could interrupt a delicate portion of the spelling if they attempted to use the gate. So he double-checks his Manual, noting that Rhiow had sent out a general block to anyone who attempted to gate into or out of Grand Central Terminal. 

Still, Tom had been well-repaid by being overly cautious in the past and thus creates a shield that will only allow members of the worldgate team access to any of the gates areas, affixing a wizardly tag explaining the circumstances for any wizards who happen to encounter Tom's shield. 

With that done, Tom returns and seats himself off to the side, keeping an eye on Carl, Rhiow and the others while they discuss the best solution to dispersing the gravity well. He immerses himself in his Manual, redirecting the messages sent for Carl if they were urgent and dealing with the information that piles up for them as Seniors himself. Occasionally, Carl calls for Tom to look up this spell or that law while the gate team works, using Tom as a mobile library instead of trying to look up seventeen different things at once as Urruah and Saash continued to construct the final spell. Tom doesn't mind it, he really doesn't. He might not always understand it, but he knows how helpful it is not to have to look up everything himself when time is of the essence. 

Outside, Tom can hear as the rush hour traffic slowly fades into something approximating a slow night for the Grand Central Terminal. It was perhaps still busier than more, given the holiday, but it had certainly become at least somewhat quieter. He rubs at his eyes, glancing out where the sun had long since set, the occasional star just barely visible if Tom squints out the window. It's the one thing he misses about living in California; there were plenty of areas where it was possible to escape the light pollution of the city and simply gaze up at the endless Milky Way. 

"Alright," Carl says decisively. "This looks good. Tom?" 

Tom moves over to look at the completed spell diagram, which is stretched out in one of the main worldgating loci. He looks it over carefully with his fresh eyes, asking questions when he's not sure what part of the spell is supposed to do, listening as Carl or Saash walks him through the math and physics behind the diagram. He might not be the one with a stake in the spell, not this time, but with the sensitive string structure of worldgates, being careful is critical. So Tom pokes and prods and watches as Carl and the others easily answer all of his concerns even as they remain of the looming deadline. 

When at last they've finished, Carl takes a satisfied step back. "Alright. Does the ground suit?" he asks his companions. Rhiow, Urruah, Saash and Arhu all nod their heads in a distinctly humanoid fashion. It amuses Tom in a vague sort of sense to see it as he tucks himself securely into the shadows, where he may observe without disrupting the delicate work being done before him. 

As always, a spell of such depth and complexity is exhilarating to watch. With his background in spell creation, Tom gives a lot of advice but rarely gets to see the end result. On the rare times he's out on Errantry these days he much prefers finesse over sheer power, preferring to keep it simple; he's never been the powerhouse that some of his fellow Seniors are and can't hold a candle to some of the higher ups. He once saw the Galatic Arm Coordinator channel more raw energy than he'd ever seen in his life while simultaneously attending to the necessary duties of their position. 

What Carl is doing now is different, though, neither deceptively simple nor overwhelmingly powerful. There's a subtle strength and balance to it, the threads of the Speech rising up in silver strings as the hyperstring structure of the worldgates slowly began to blaze in a multitude of colors. 

"—of the alpha phi configuration of the _ophitalz_ structure and the adjacent density well—" Rhiow is murmuring in her smooth, even Speech as she identifies the problem. The universe is quieting down, listening to her request. Tom lets it wash over him, staring as the worldgate comes to life in a way even wizards rarely see. It had always seemed like something out of a fairytale, this sort of almost instantaneous travel, more like it belonged in some of his wilder adapted novels that he'd published. 

Tom is awed time and again of the reality of what he gets to do as a wizard, even if he's not actually doing anything—to sit here, the majority of the Grand Central Terminal illuminated by fine threads that spin in strange patterns and are studded by points of light that look like stars. 

Saash and Carl join Rhiow's spell-weaving, coaxing the gravity well to shift just a little until it is evenly dispersed without taxing the structure of the gateway. Their voices rise a little, becoming more strident and layered, the spell beginning to speak through them as they feed it more power. The colors intensify for a bright moment, all the strings snapping into a different order as Rhiow, Carl and Saash finish speaking and set the spell free. 

Tom's breath catches in his throat as the dazzling worldgates begin their new, ponderous dance through Grand Central Terminal before the lights flare one last time and fade away. 

Carl sinks to his knees, gasping for breath, while the cat worldgating team all wobble before curling up, looking for all the world like housecats taking a nap in the sun. Tom bites down on a smile, emerging from his hiding spot and resting gentle fingers on Rhiow's head. Independent creatures though cats are, they know when they are well-deserving of a scratch, and Tom obediently gave them all a moment's attention. 

"So. It's come to this," Carl intones melodramatically behind him. "Our wizardly colleagues now get more love and attention than me, on Valentine's Day?" He wipes the sweat from his face, realizes he's still wearing a collared shirt from his work at CBS and scowls. Tom chuckles, and comes over to kneel beside Carl. 

"You did good," he murmurs. The words are soft, intimate, and the corner of Carl's mouth curls up in a smile. Tom leaves him to recover while he rummages around in the bag, offering the gifts of thanks to Rhiow and her team and setting the rest of the treats in the corner where they'll be able to enjoy them over the coming days. As good as Carl is with these worldgates, Rhiow's team just has a natural affinity for them. When they're all settled, Tom takes the rest of the food and grabs a hold of Carl, murmuring a quick translocation spell. 

It's still Valentine's Day, after all. 

~*~ 

They end up on the roof of Grand Central Terminal. 

It's dark enough out that unless someone shines a light directly on them, they're not going to be seen, away from the streets as they are. Tom slings Carl's coat over his shoulders and wraps himself up in his own before adding a scarf. Carl looks around him with some surprise, the high rise buildings bracketing them on every side and the noise from the streets filling the air with ambient noise. Tom ignores Carl's surprise to unpack all of the food. It's mostly just two plastic containers of pasta and fruit, both of which are room temperature, with bottles of water for them both. 

Carl's eyes crinkle with a smile as Tom sets everything out and hands Carl his fork. When he sees the fondness in Carl's face, Tom lets out a sigh of relief he wasn't even aware of holding. Carl is tired, Tom is sure, and the world isn't going to allow them to rest tomorrow just because they've solved a problem today. Tom is making Carl do this anyways, celebrate Valentine's Day, and it would be selfish except for the way Tom is so _happy_ to be with Carl. Just seeing the man even nearly twenty years after they first met can instill the same sort of genuine desire to just be here, at Carl's side. It makes him feel lucky. 

He doesn't even realize that Carl's been listening in until his amused voice murmurs, _You say that like it's not the same for me. I love you, Tom._ There is such warmth, such want in that simple phrase that Tom finds himself smiling with rare, unfettered joy. 

They eat and talk and kiss each other with mouths that taste of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies until Tom's nose is red and Carl's fingers are frozen before they finally go home. 

~*~ 

Tom is not a saint, however. When Carl's alarm goes off at six the following morning, Tom rolls over like he always does and pulls the pillow over his head, kicking at Carl until the other man finally shuts it off. The room is still dim, though, and he's long since learned to sleep through Carl's early morning movement so he drops back off quickly enough. If he doesn't have to get up at some obscene hour of the morning, he certainly won't, not for all the love in the world. 

He doesn't hear the car leave, though, and still half-asleep Tom sits up with his hair standing on end as he tries to figure out what's going on. 

Carl comes up, dressed for work, but with a grin quirking the corner of his mouth. "I got an email this morning, saying that the building had some sort of electrical failure and we're being given the day off," he states conversationally. He begins stripping off his clothing, letting it all fall to the floor carelessly. "Guess the Powers really do try to pay things forward occasionally." 

Tom attempts to understand what Carl's saying, but it's difficult. There's an awful lot of flesh being bared right now, and despite Tom's best intentions, Carl had practically collapsed into bed the moment they'd returned home. Mouth rather dry, Tom says, "What?" rather stupidly. 

"I said," Carl repeats, "that I have the day off." 

Tom thinks about that. "Did you ask to take it off?" he asks. He's pretty sure that's a reasonable question, given the hour, but he can't be sure. 

"No. And before you ask, I didn't do anything to the power, either." 

"Okay." Tom swallows heavily as Carl climbs into bed with him, pressing into Tom's personal space. "Now what?" 

"This." Carl kisses him smoothly, thoroughly, pressing Tom down into the sheets with a steady strength. Tom tilts his head up, losing himself in the feel of Carl's mouth against his own. Carl breaks it suddenly, pulling back so Tom can just barely see the glint of Carl's grey eyes in what morning light has entered the room. He tries to pull Carl back down into the kiss, never one to waste an opportunity, but Carl just winks. 

"Happy belated Valentine's Day, I suppose." 

Tom just shakes his head and laughs, reveling in the feeling of Carl's grin against his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> A pinch hit for lectin_gaezat over at dai_stiho. Sorry it's late, but I hope you enjoy it nevertheless!


End file.
